Towards Smart Worlds with Pervasive Smart u-Things and u-Intelligence
Weiser and Brown summarized the modern computing history in three waves/phases/eras/trends: the mainframe, the PC and the UC (Ubiquitous Computing), which corresponds to three kinds of relationships between human and computers: m-to-1, 1-to-1 and 1-to-m. In addition to the relationships, what are other fundamental features in the three waves? This talk is to present my understanding and experiences to study and summarize some of the special features, potential directions, hard issues and grand challenges in UC.
Ubiquitous computing (pervasive computing, AmI, or "whatever it is called" computing), in contrast to cyber computing that is mainly for digital e-things in computers/web, is primarily for physical things in the real world and their function/service enhancement or extension by adding computing abilities of information sense, communication and processing to them. Real physical things (object and space) are called u-things, as opposed to the virtual digital e-things, if they are attached, embedded or blended with computers, networks, sensors, actors, IC-tags and so on. Smart u-things are ones that can, more or less, sense, compute, communicate, and/or take some actions according to their goals, situated contexts, users' needs, etc.
Ubiquitous intelligence (UI, u-intelligence) is focused on various levels/kinds of intelligence for such smart u-things, related technologies and their pervasion in the real world towards smart worlds (SW). Probably, UI or u-Intelligence could be regarded as the next intelligence wave after human-emulated AI, nature-inspired soft computing and social-oriented agent technology. Some real world complexity related issues (physical restriction, unpredictable exception, incomplete information, unknown risk/danger, out of control, etc.) would be new factors/dimensions brought about by UI, and much more crucial and challenging in making u-things truly smart and trustworthy.
About Dr. Jianhua Ma
Jianhua Ma is a Professor at the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences of Hosei University since 2000. Previously, he had 15 years' teaching/research experience at NUDT, Xidian University and the University of Aizu (Japan). His research from 1983 to 2003 covered coding techniques for wireless communications, data/video transmission security, speech recognition and synthesis, multimedia QoS, 1-to-m HC hyper-interface, graphics rendering ASIC, e-learning and virtual university, CSCW, multi-agents, Internet audio and video, mobile web service, P2P network, etc. Since 2003 he has been devoted to what he called Smart Worlds (SW) pervaded with smart/intelligent u-things including three kinds of essential elements: smart object, smart space/hyperspace and smart system, which are based on the vision of the future Ubiquitous Intelligence (UI, u-Intelligence) or Pervasive Intelligence (PI, π).
Dr. Ma is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of three international journals: Journal of Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligence (JUCI), Journal of Mobile Multimedia (JMM) and Journal of Autonomic and Trusted Computing (JoATC), and the Assistant Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications (JPCC). He is on the editorial board of IJCPOL, IJDET, IJWMC, and IJSH, and has edited more than 10 journal special issues as a Guest Editor. He organized the 6th Int'l Conference on Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMS'99) as PC Co-Chair, the 1st Int'l Conference on Cyber Worlds (CW'02) as one of founders and PC Co-Chairs, and the 18th IEEE Int'l Conference on Advanced Information Networks and Applications as a General Co-Chair. He is a founder of Int'l Conf. on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC) and Int'l Conf. on Autonomic and Trusted Computing (ATC). He has severed many other conferences/workshops as various chairs and committee members.
Dr. Ma obtained his B.S, M.S. and Ph.D in 1982, 1985 and 1990, respectively. He was awarded as the Excellent Graduated Student by NUDT in 1982. He received the Annual Excellent Paper Awards from China Information Theory Society, Electronics Society, and Association of Hunan Science and Technology, respectively. He received the Best Paper Award from the Int'l Conference on Information Society in the 21st Century (IS2000), and the Highly Commended Paper Award from the IEEE Int'l Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA2004). He received the Appreciation Certificate from IEEE Computer Society in 2004, 2005 and 2006, respectively.
Dr. Lionel M. Ni
Chair Professor and Head, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
China's National Research Project on Wireless Sensor Networks
This talk will give an overview of the 5-year National Basic Research Program of China (also known as the 973 Program) on Wireless Sensor Networks that was launched in September 2006 and sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology. This national research project involves researchers from many major universities in China and Hong Kong, and aims to tackle fundamental research issues rising in three major application domains: coal mine surveillance, water pollution monitoring, and traffic monitoring and control. The distinctive feature of this project is that it will present a systematic study of wireless sensor networks, from node platform development, core protocol design and system solution development to critical problems. This talk will address the research challenges, current progress, and future plans.
About Dr. Lionel M. Ni
Lionel M. Ni is Chair Professor and Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He also serves as Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), Director of HKUST China Ministry of Education/Microsoft Research Asia IT Key Lab, and Director of HKUST Digital Life Research Center. Among his many honorary and adjunct positions, he is an honorary President of the South China Institute of Software Engineering at Guangzhou University, China, a Distinguished Professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and an honorary Chair Professor of National Tsinghua University (Hsinchu). Dr. Ni earned his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1980. A fellow of IEEE, Dr. Ni has chaired many professional conferences and served on the editorial board of many journals. He has directly supervised 34 Ph.D. students, won five best paper awards, and the 1994 Michigan State University Distinguished Faculty Award. He is a co-author of three books: "Interconnection Networks: An Engineering Approach" (Morgan Kaufmann 2002), "Smart Phone and Next Generation Mobile Computing" (Morgan Kaufmann 2006), and "Professional Smartphone Programming" (Wrox 2007).
